


birds, roses and hello

by Siriusstuff



Series: Teodor Claudius Talan Stilinski-Hale [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Claudia Stilinski Feels, Established Relationship, Ficlet, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Parenthood, Remembering the Dead, Sentimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 06:44:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4128636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siriusstuff/pseuds/Siriusstuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Derek bring Teo with them to the cemetery to visit Claudia's grave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	birds, roses and hello

**Author's Note:**

> Stiles tidies up his mom's grave site and introduces her to her grandson. (And I just made myself cry.)

Engraved deeply in the pink granite block, “CLAUDIA STILINSKI,” then a pair of dates which Stiles skipped past, as he always did, then ”Beloved Wife and Mother,” which Stiles might also have skipped if his attention hadn’t been drawn to how the little plant’s branches were obscuring some of the letters.

From the canvas bag, with three white roses sticking out the top of it, he removed a pair of clippers. The grave’s single planting, a small rock rose bush, still had pallid pink blossoms dotting it, flowering even in the drought of late August—but that was why Stiles and his dad had chosen it a few years ago. It needed very little water and bloomed from spring to summer’s end, a spot of evergreen life in the midst of the cemetery’s parching landscape.

Stiles trimmed rangy twigs from the bush but any that had flowers he saved in a little pile. He stuck those in the soil along the stone’s base.

When he’d finished pruning and the gravestone was no longer obscured, Stiles stood, wiping his hands clean.

Derek had been vigilantly standing close, keeping Teodor occupied in his arms while Stiles grave-tended. 

“C’mere, baby boy,” Stiles said and took his son from his husband. He crouched again at the foot of the grave, holding up Teo in a wobbly stance. Derek crouched alongside them.

The quiet of the grounds made a nearby convocation of birds in some trees impossible to ignore, it was so loud. Among Teo’s jabber Stiles was sure he heard more than once the distinct pronunciation of “buhbs.”

It had been a long time since Stiles had actually talked to his mom at her grave. He’d already stopped thinking of her as being _there_ , in the ground, when he was younger, after a few years had passed since her death. He hadn’t yet gotten to the place of thinking of her as some disembodied spirit in the ether, though.

 _Hi, Mom_ , he’d say when he first arrived at the grave site, but whatever else he had to say would stay silent in his mind.

Not today, however. “Hey, Mom,” he said aloud. “Your grandson’s here to say hello.—Say ‘hello,’ Tay.”

“Hao,” Teo managed.

It merited a kiss. “Good boy.—He’s so smart, Mom. Just like me, right?”

Stiles felt Derek’s large warm hand rest on his back. Teo enjoyed his own fist wedged in his mouth.

“Sorry this is the first time we’re bringing him. He just turned one. I guess I wanted to wait till he was old enough to get some impression…” Stiles trailed off. He wasn’t being completely honest.

He hoped the little hitch in his voice got lost in the incessant chirping and raucous bird-chatter.

The noisy tree kept drawing his baby’s attention.

“Buhbs deh sah,” Teo proclaimed.

“Yes, Tay, there’s lots of birds there,” Stiles answered, then went back to addressing his mom. “Derek’s making a nature lover of our kid. Shows him trees and birds and clouds, the whole great outdoors.—You’d love this little guy, Mom. Of course you would. He’s so funny now that he’s starting to talk—or trying to.”

Detecting his papa’s changing heartbeat, and the faint scent of sorrow, Teo’s attention shifted from the clamorous birds to his father. He laid a hand on Stiles’s face, right in the track of a lone tear.

“Bop _pa_ ,” Teo said.

Derek’s arm wrapped around Stiles’s shoulders.

“I’m OK,” Stiles assured, not convincingly.

Suddenly something, somewhere, startled all the birds from their tree. Their cacophony abruptly cut off at the same instant they vacated their perches with a percussive flapping _en masse_. The flock streaked overhead. Teo, wide-eyed, followed their flight as far as he could tilt back his head.

“Ahpp!” he declared, with a sputter.

Stiles gave his little son a theatrically shocked look. “Where’d they go, Tay?”

“Ey kai,” was Teo’s answer.

“Did he just say, ‘In the sky’?” Stiles asked Derek.

Derek huffed. He’d be glad to say his one-year-old child was so bright. Instead he opted for, “I _do_ name everything I point out to him. And we do look at the sky.”

Stiles kissed both his wolves.

“Here, hold him, please,” he asked, then reached for the roses. He resumed his conversation with his mother.

“I guess you already know Derek’s mom and dad had prior claim to ‘grandma and grandpa,’ so we’re teaching Teo to call dad ‘Big Poppa,’ which you _know_ the old man loves.—That’d make you ‘Big Momma.’”

Stiles laid a single rose on the grave’s dry grass. “I love you, Mom. Always.” He handed a rose to Derek who laid it down besides the first one.

“Peace be with you, Claudia,” Derek said.

With a claw, Derek sliced away half the long stem of the remaining rose, handed it to Teo, who promptly aimed it at his mouth. Stiles stopped that action from completing. “No, Tay, that’s for your Big Momma.” It took the concerted efforts of both his dads to hold him over the spot and encourage the boy to drop his rose. It fell crosswise and Stiles adjusted it to lie between his and Derek’s roses.

Then, canvas bag in hand, Teo in Derek’s arms again, the trio prepared to go.

“En dass wuhbah,” Teo announced.

Derek snickered discreetly. Stiles replied, “Sorry, mister. Didn’t quite catch that.—Say goodbye to Big Momma. Say ‘bye-bye.’”

Teo just looked at Stiles. There was no one to say “bye-bye” to.

“Wave ‘bye-bye’?” Stiles waved at the grave. Teo’s current version of waving was opening and closing his fist, which he did, looking at Stiles.

“Blow a kiss?” Stiles blew a kiss towards his mom’s grave. Teo continued staring at his papa, and stare was all he did.

“We’ll work on that,” Derek advised.

The parking lot lay on the far side from where Claudia Stilinski was buried. Derek, Teo and Stiles headed in that direction but Stiles turned around for a last look, taking in the sight: the three white roses, coiffed rock rose bush and modest pink marker stone. Suddenly he was quite aware there was no way his mom would ever have been content with “Big Momma” as her grandchild’s name for her. Without a doubt she’d have selected her own designation, and it would have been something nobody had ever heard before or could have even thought of but her. Stiles could not imagine what it would have been, other than perfect.

Then he rejoined his little family walking to their car on their way to brunch at grandma’s and grandpa’s manse in the Hale Preserve.


End file.
